


Still I Rise

by karrenia_rune



Category: Space Cases (TV)
Genre: Challenge Response, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 19:21:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at Elmira, and her rather problematic place in her people's culture and her resolve to rise above it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still I Rise

Disclaimer: Space Cases is the creation of Bill Mumy and Peter David and Nickoloden Television etc; it does not belong to me. The story was written the 2011 Multifandom Female FemmGen Ficathon Prompt #88 (88) There is a place in God's sun for the youth 'farthest down' who has the vision, the determination, and the courage to reach it. -- Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), African-American educator and civil rights activist; founder, in 1904, of a school for black girls which eventually became Bethune-Cookman University, a black university in Daytona Beach, Florida; adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.)

 

“Still I Rise” by karrenia

She moved with an unaccustomed grace rarely seen in both males and females of her species; and it is grace that is as much in-born as it is an acquired skill. The ship thrummed around her humming with purpose and activity. Sometimes, as she lay awake at night Elmira thought that she could almost time the beating of her pulse along in time with the thrumming of the engines.

And it’s isn’t her place aboard the ship that keeps her awake at night. Generally speaking it is the men who serve aboard ship, even if she were not the only daughter of the most powerful and of the Spung Warlords, Shank would not have not brought daughter along; if not for her gift.

‘Her gift, her curse, she thought, it often depends on who you ask.’ Be that as it may, when the visions came upon me in spurts, in surges; no matter what my father always said that whichever way he choose to interpret them it was always for the good of the Empire.”

She can tell by the smiles and the looks in their eyes that the crew speculates among themselves both on her father’s volatile temper, on how they might use her to their advantage, or maybe they don’t even think much of her at all. She does not much care for their opinions, because the person whose opinion does matter to her is well, conveniently absent much of the time.

When she was much younger she had believed, perhaps naively, that she could gain a measure more of her father’s affections through her own innate affection for him and others.

The Spung are not given much to overt displays of affection toward each other, even in private and worse on board a ship of the line. There were times when she knew that she was drawing him out little by little.

She lay on her back on the bed with her hands and thought about this for a while.

She is Spung that will not change and if given the choice she doubts that she would wish to change for what she is; but since meeting the crew of the Christa Elmira has been forced to reexamine some of the hard set precepts of her upbringing.

‘And it’s not so much because of myr growing affection and relationship with the Andromedan navigator, Radu, although myr relationship with Radu does complicate things a little bit; but in a good way.’ Elmira allowed herself a tight-lipped smile at that last thought and sighed.  
At one point, she had even considered running away, to the Christa or points unknown, but her father was nothing if not tenacious, and he had come after her and taken her back at the point of weapons fire. “Could I risk their lives and their ship for my sake, again? No, I don’t believe I can do that to them, not after everything we’ve been through together.”

Again it might just have been that Spung reticence, the unwillingness or the inability to display emotions openly that had made it impossible for them to talk about what had happened. In her time among the crew of the Christa she had learned that the Earthers have a saying: the longer one bottles up emotions sooner or later they’ll end up eating one up inside. It’s an apt saying, but when she tried to get her father to open up, talk about stuff in general, he simply shuts down.

At this point Elmira isn’t sure that it matters as much anymore if Warlord Shanks knows that her predictions/visions are coming less and less frequently, and she does not really care.  
She could be more than just the daughter of Warlord Shank, more than just a young woman prone to occasional visions; although in recent months the visions are coming upon her less and less frequently; and perhaps they may stop all together. On the heels of this last thought Elmira suddenly wondered if this last might just be a blessing in disguise.

“There is so much more out there just waiting for me to come upon it, in my own terms. Ah, father, this may not be what you wanted for me, but you always did want me to be happy.”  
This path that she was on now would not be with its dangers and assorted stumbling blocks and even if she does lose her ability to ‘see’ and this makes her of less use to the Spung Empire,” well she thought sitting up in bed, “he’ll just have to deal with it. I think I understand the risks going forward, and I find them acceptable.”

 


End file.
